


Piano Man

by fruitcakes



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 14:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11442543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitcakes/pseuds/fruitcakes
Summary: Wonwoo swears on his life that they didn’t start out like that. They merely texted each other for help regarding studies. When they veered so off-course is a mystery to both of them. Either way, at some point in time, all their conversations started being exceptionally weird.





	Piano Man

**Author's Note:**

> So all I had for this was “emo buddies swnu” and nowhere to go with it. But it happened, and it's weird, but please indulge me. 
> 
> Mostly based off of my conversations with a classmate, so if you see anything interesting or witty, it was probably said by him. 
> 
> A big big thank you to Annie(kwonsoonday) and Salma(icebaby) for reading and betaing and just being great in general. (I love boo boo family) 
> 
> Lastly, the music is kinda important to this story. It would be nice if you listen ~

Journal Excerpt: 31 March, 2017

_Suspended in the chasm between evening and night, the windows allow in the faintest streaks of light. Filtered through translucent red curtains, it bathes the room in an eerie red glow that belongs in a love motel; not here, not in Soonyoung’s room.  
_

_The door creaks a little when Wonwoo shuts it. Perturbed by the sound, the little lump under the comforter stirs. For a second, Wonwoo considers rushing out and waiting in the foyer because it feels invasive walking in here while Soonyoung sleeps. Despite the fact that he knows Soonyoung’s worst thoughts, his darkest secrets, and Soonyoung knows all of his, stepping into his bedroom still feels like crossing a line.  
_

_There’s hardly any time to dwell though, because the silence is interrupted by Soonyoung saying, “Wonwoo?” Sleep-heavy and extremely rough and how Wonwoo has never heard it before, his voice makes Wonwoo uneasy. It adds on to the feeling that_ this _is wrong._

_“Hi,” he ventures, regardless._   
_Soonyoung regains his senses, and offers Wonwoo a seat on a chair next to the bed. The room is still dark because at the moment, they both prefer it that way.  
Soonyoung groans as he stretches, narrowly missing knocking Wonwoo’s glasses off his face.They both chuckle sheepishly. “Good nap?” Wonwoo asks. He doesn’t know what else to say._

_“Yeah,” Soonyoung replies, placing his own pair of spectacles on his face. He blinks twice, and then gives a gentle smile. “So, have you decided?”_

~

“Hey, look at [this](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Mq_rSlDUOtc/WSXMDHX3_-I/AAAAAAAALPA/X6fLRd_519YxGgVgFeD5kH26YwFFzy92ACLcB/s1600/cogitoergosum-final.jpg).” Wonwoo nudged Soonyoung’s shoulder and handed over his phone.

Soonyoung accepted it and stared at it for a good minute, before his lips twisted into a grimace. Even over the din of students filing in and talking to each other, Wonwoo heard the faint groan Soonyoung let loose. “What’s wrong?” he asked, taking his phone back.

“I feel like I’m being mocked,” Soonyoung said, placing his chin on his palm and staring at the blank whiteboard. Wonwoo looked at the unoffending comic strip, and then at Soonyoung, then at nowhere in particular. “Why?” he asked, brows furrowed in confusion. The door was closed by the last kid entering and the sound of several kids speaking at once became louder. Class wasn't for another 5 minutes, enough to think about why they think in the first place.

“That comic—it’s all true.” Soonyoung said, tilting his head, letting it fall off his hand onto the thick book laid on his desk.

“And?” Wonwoo prompted.

“And a stupid comic shouldn’t be able to lay out all of my mind in nine frames.”

Wonwoo didn't really understand but he didn't question further. He chose instead, to carefully mull it over in his head as the teacher entered the class and began to drone on.

~ 

  
Senior year was the harbinger of a lot of new things for Wonwoo—predominantly, a perpetually fucked up sleep schedule and a couple of unlikely friendships—one with Kwon Soonyoung and the other with Lee Seokmin. Both straight-A students and both oddballs. It just so happened that while Seokmin was the kind of friend whom he casually hung out with, things went awry with Soonyoung.

Wonwoo swears on his life that they didn’t start out like that. They merely texted each other for help regarding studies. When they veered so off-course is a mystery to both of them. Either way, at some point in time, all their conversations started being exceptionally weird.

They were filled with odd questions that you wouldn't normally ask a classmate. For instance, what does hope mean to you? That's just not an appropriate greeting and Wonwoo knew this. But that's just how they were, that's just how most of their conversations went. (For the record, Soonyoung’s answer was ‘it’s what you have when you have nothing else.’)

Over the first three months of the semester, the three of them formed this very unlikely, very weird support system. Wonwoo wasn't aware of its existence till Seokmin told him one day that Soonyoung had expressed concern about his emotional equilibrium.

“He thinks you won't make it through senior year, at least not with your sanity intact,” Seokmin said, stirring his lemonade. They were at his house, whiling away the afternoon under the pretense of studying. They had to act like they were studying, otherwise his parents didn't allow Wonwoo over.

“Why?” Wonwoo questioned, furrowing his brows.

Seokmin shrugged. “Asked me to watch out for you.”

At this, Wonwoo laughed because if someone needed the buddy system to get through things, it was _Seokmin_. “That's ridiculous,” he scoffed. “I don't need any looking out for.”

Seokmin nodded with a smile. “He said you would say that.”

For a whole day after that, Wonwoo kept thinking about what he had said to Soonyoung that would elicit such concern, but he came up empty handed.

~

Senior students had the misfortune of having to attend extra classes on Saturday. Most kids left as soon as the bell rang, eager to get their weekend started. They scurried to the cinema or the mall in droves. But not Wonwoo. He sauntered over to the local library and took up a spot close to the librarian’s cabin. She let him bring snacks in.

And almost always, Soonyoung was there too. It became an unplanned rendezvous of sorts. But they always sat two chairs apart, and studied by themselves, turning to each other only when they desperately needed help.

As their attention span waned and evening rolled around, they eventually packed up their stuff and walked out. There was a food stall just around the corner that sold the best burgers, and they would always grab one. Sat on a bench across the street, they stared into the distance and ate slowly.

“Oh, you have to listen to this song!” Wonwoo exclaimed, as he remembered. He handed Soonyoung his phone and earplugs, letting the [song](https://youtu.be/SuFScoO4tb0) play when he had them plugged in.

He waited in silence for Soonyoung’s response. His face, blank at first, turned into a wry little smile. “How does one man know so many truths?” Soonyoung asked with a low chuckle.

Wonwoo shook his head. “And how come I don't know a single one?”

“What do you have planned for Sunday?” Soonyoung asked, taking the last bite from his burger and crumpling the wrapper.

“Lie in bed all day, probably. Sundays are lazy days.” Wonwoo answered. “But then, all days are lazy days.”

This made Soonyoung laugh. He slung his bag over his shoulder. “So you do know a truth after all.”

~

They listened to a lot of Billy Joel during the week that followed. [The River Of Dreams ](https://youtu.be/hSq4B_zHqPM)before class, [Vienna](https://youtu.be/NgXC6CcojHs)  after class, and [Piano Man ](https://youtu.be/xEprNGh3FRo) with their weekly ritual (the burgers).

“I feel like Vienna was written for me,” Soonyoung said sheepishly, wiping mustard from the corner of his mouth.

It's true, it might as well have been, with the way Soonyoung pushed himself just a little more, to do just a little better till the point where he was pulling his hair out. He was bad with pressure, and there was always so much of it on him.

Wonwoo, while thinking all this, forgot to reply and the silence stretched on like cheese till Soonyoung interrupted. “I know it's just probably in my head but whenever you don't reply, I can feel some judgement on your part. And that just screws me up. Thought you should know.”

And that’s, probably the most frank Soonyoung had ever been. It left Wonwoo a little dumbstruck, struggling to string two words together. “I… I d-didn't…”

Soonyoung smiled. “It's probably just me being insecure but…” he trailed off, suddenly feeling like he spoke too much. “It's fine. I get a forced introspection, which is fun.”

Only Soonyoung could call forced introspection ‘fun’. But it made Wonwoo stop and think, why he had that effect, why his silence meant judgement. He was reminded of the time a friend had exclaimed “God, you give me multiple existential crises everyday!”

He looked down at his feet and wondered if it was the same with Soonyoung. They were not awfully close and they didn't spend as much time together either, but this was really all they talked about.

“You don't make it sound much fun,” he mumbled.

Soonyoung chuckled lightly. “No, it's good. I like knowing I'm capable of introspection.”

And it was said carefully, with a genuine smile, and Wonwoo was compelled to believe it. He nodded. “I was starting to wonder if I was having a not so good effect,” he said.

“No, you're having a wonderful effect. So…” Here, Soonyoung hesitated for a second before, “thanks.”

~

English class at school was a pain. Their teacher was indifferent, rude, and bitingly sarcastic. She never actually bothered to teach, just assigned them work and read her novel.

That day, she was feeling extra generous so she even went so far as to shuffle their seats to prevent them from chattering with their friends.

As it happened, Soonyoung ended up next to Wonwoo. They had an essay to write about a local festival but that's boring, so they talked.

“Have you ever tried writing?” Soonyoung asked, twirling his pen.

Wonwoo furrowed his brows. “Like… a blog?”

“Sure, a blog, or anything else like a journal or a story.”

Wonwoo shook his head. “Not really,” he said.

“Me neither,” Soonyoung sighed and slumped onto the desk. “I tried but, I can't. All that comes out is drivel.”

Later that night, as Wonwoo sat on his desk, hunched over his accountancy homework, he remembered the conversation from class. And writing, instead of stewing on his thoughts all the time, didn't seem half as bad an idea.

Giving up on the ledger, he dug out from his drawer the spiral bound notebook his classmate had gifted to him last year for his birthday. It was still wrapped in plastic and he felt a childish sort of glee as he ripped it open.

With no clear idea about what he was going to write, Wonwoo sat and stared at the blank page. Baby steps, he told himself, as he jotted down the date on the top right corner.

That night he wrote only two lines.

_I'm not afraid of doing new things.  
I'm not afraid to change._

~

Senior year was one big rush. Between lunch with Seokmin, studying, more studying, and just a little downtime to keep himself sane, Wonwoo didn't notice how fast time flew, till it was all gone. In the blink of an eye, they were appearing for their finals. The stress kept them running all through—days spent holed up in one single room, cramming, losing sleep, and bowing under stress. Wonwoo's notebook steadily filled up with distressing thoughts, stories he wrote to procrastinate studying, poems he thought up in between exams.

And then it was all over. The last exam came and went and three hours later, no one could believe that they were free asbirds. It was overwhelming and exhausting and exciting all at once. So Wonwoo dealt with it the best way he knew; he went home and took a long, _long_ nap.

When he woke up, he saw a text from Soonyoung—a[link](https://youtu.be/ONd4qSs5B5k) to a video with the message, _‘we did it.’_

~

On results day, Wonwoo couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He stared at the computer screen, eyes wide and mouth hanging open. He refreshed the page several times, typed in his roll number thrice but the numbers didn’t change.

He did so much worse than he had expected. With his scores, he couldn't go to any college he wanted. The local college, at the most, would let him in and he couldn't quite believe it.

Seokmin called him and screeched for a good minute. As it turned out, he had done much better than Wonwoo had and was all set to go to his dream college.

So was Soonyoung.

It was almost unsettling how things fell into place for them, how it seemed they had everything figured out. But Wonwoo was here, not knowing what he did wrong.

Even as his parents watched with thinly veiled concern, Wonwoo beat himself up within an inch of his life. Buried beneath three blankets, he let his mind spiral downward into a pit of self-loathing. His despair reflected everywhere, especially in his journal.

Wonwoo's writing by now had bloomed into stories longer than six thousand words, pages upon pages of poems, and ideas spanning three whole notebooks. On a whim, he applied to a very well-known writing course in the city, highly merited. And somehow, by some stroke of luck, he was selected. The director of the one-year programme even complimented him on his composition. But now, in the face of his failure, that little achievement looked pale and pointless.

The email glared at him every time he checked his inbox, beckoning him to make a decision, to just _go_. But something held him back.

Between school ending and college starting, there was a good three months of absolutely _nothing_. Seokmin took it upon him to keep Wonwoo busy, and dragged him to cafes and restaurants and street markets.

Somewhere then, Wonwoo and Soonyoung decided to meet up too. It was the first time they met, outside school, and away from the library, and no school and studies on their mind. It was a lot of awkward silence, till Seokmin texted Soonyoung.

In a moment of annoyance, Soonyoung flung his phone across the table and whined, burying his head in his hands.

“What's wrong?” Wonwoo asked, setting down his milkshake and leaning forward.

“Seokmin ran into Jae,” Soonyoung replied, slumping back in his chair. Jae, the asshole ex-boyfriend that Seokmin had the displeasure of dealing with for a good six months, and who had left him a little scarred.

“Oh,” Wonwoo said, at a loss for anything else to say.

“And he's sad. But I'm sick of people texting me only when they're sad,” Soonyoung mumbled. He was blinking at the ceiling lights, mouth downturned. “I just want someone to ask me about my day once in awhile.”

It was a strange thing to confess, even more strangely timed. Wonwoo found himself in a fix, guilty of the very thing Soonyoung had complained about. More than once, he had thought of starting off a conversation with “hi, how are you?” but always thought Soonyoung wouldn't appreciate him wasting his time. The pace at which Soonyoung was always rushing, the way he always had work to get to, Wonwoo didn't think he liked idle chitchat.

“Sorry,” he said, since he felt obliged to.

Soonyoung sat up straight and vehemently shook his head. “No, no, I didn't mean it like that.”

“I just didn't think you would appreciate that,” Wonwoo defended. “Otherwise I would have.”

The air was stilted and Wonwoo was desperate to make it easy going. “Asked you about your day, I mean. I thought of it often, of course. But really, you never seemed to have the ti-”

“Wonwoo,” Soonyoung interrupted his rambling with a short little laugh. “It's fine. You can start now, if you want,” he said with a dazzling smile.  
~

And he did. Casual conversation with Soonyoung was weird at first, stilted to the point where they would leave them midway. But then they got better, and more playful, and more honest.

Weirder still was when he decided to tell Soonyoung about his writing. Although the boy had been the one to push him towards it, to put the idea in his head, he didn't know that Wonwoo had actually taken it up.

Wonwoo told him about the programme too.

“I don't understand why you don't wanna go,” Soonyoung says, sipping his black coffee.

“I don't know either,” Wonwoo says, feeling timid. By that time, he actually knew. But he wasn't going to admit that he was _afraid_ —afraid of failing colossally yet again.

“Will you show me something you've written?” Soonyoung asked, gently, leaning forward.

Wonwoo, placing all his trust in the boy, and taking a deep breath, handed him his first notebook. Opening the cover, Soonyoung read the first page.

He hummed, and then turned it so Wonwoo could read it too.

_I'm not afraid of doing new things.  
I'm not afraid to change._

“Aren't you?” he asked.

~

“So, have you decided?”

Wonwoo clears his throat. “I have,” he says.

Soonyoung looks at him expectantly.

“I'm going,” he replies and breaks into a smile and feeling, for the first time in a while, _sure_ of himself.

~

  
All through the last two years of school, Soonyoung and Wonwoo were friends, and Wonwoo and Seokmin were friends, and Seokmin and Soonyoung were friends. But they weren't friends with _each_ _other_. As it turned out later, it's a good thing they never did.

Because the three of them together was a disaster waiting to happen. Wonwoo can see that now, as it unfolds in front of his own eyes.

It was some stroke of luck that were going to the same city. There on out, it was a no-brainer to live together.

But _oh_ , it's a mess. They got here an hour ago, and already everything is everywhere. Unpacking has turned into insulting each other’s fashion choices and cleaning has turned into hitting each other with brooms. Why did living together seem like a good idea?

Close to ten, they finally settle down. Lying on the living room floor in a neat row, they listen to the radio.

And when this[song](https://youtu.be/Mgv9UpsJEXs) song plays, they can't help but smile. And hope that in a few months’ time, they won't feel the same way, that they'll have something better to write home about.

…

“Fuck!” The exclamation is punctuated by a thud, as Seokmin slams the bathroom door closed. He's running extremely late, and that means he's going to punctuate every action with an expletive. It makes both Soonyoung and Wonwoo laugh, as they sit on the chairs in the balcony.

They silently watch Seokmin run around the house, gathering stuff, fixing his hair, putting on shoes, fixing his hair. He's meticulous with his looks when it comes to dates. Which is the case tonight. He has a date that was supposed to begin five minutes ago, yet he's still here, fixing his hair.

“Just leave, you look fine,” Soonyoung says, amused. He takes a sip from his bottle of coke and waves his hand as Seokmin finally says goodbye. It goes quiet.

They sit and stare at the starless city sky, drinking their cola and lost in their thoughts, till Wonwoo breaks the silence.

“I don't understand why people date,” he says.

Soonyoung laughs at that unexpected confession, then goes quiet as he thinks about it. “Maybe,” he says slowly, “they're sharing a drink called loneliness because it's better than drinking alone.”

And that makes Wonwoo laugh in turn, scrunching up his nose. But he finds he agrees with that. An amiable sort of silence settles, the drone of the city fading to white noise.

Soonyoung takes a sharp breath as if he's about to speak. Wonwoo turns to look at him but Soonyoung halts, his mouth hanging open comically. He tries again. “Do you want to go drinking?”

Wonwoo's about to remind Soonyoung that neither of them drink, but then the dots connect in his head. He's still not sure though, so he remains quiet, lips pressed into a thin line.

“With me…” Soonyoung tags on, a little too late. He's biting his lip and staring at the bottom of the glass, looking nervous. And that's certainly a first for Wonwoo, seeing Soonyoung looking like that.

He hums a little, to stall for time and _think_ about it. And realises he likes the idea.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” he says. Soonyoung looks at him to make sure he's serious and when Wonwoo smiles at him, he grins.

And God, it’s so _not_ romantic, the way they're treating this like a casual agreement, the way you would decide to carpool with someone, but it’s also perfect for them.

Within the humdrum of moving away from home, of finding a new place for themselves among new people, they find peace in knowing they'll eventually return to each other at the end of the day. And that the three of them will sit on chairs in the cramped little balcony up on the seventh floor, and still be alone in their own minds.

[The radio is always playing too. ](https://youtu.be/g-D9xcZgKX4)

 

 

~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well that's it. I know it's not angst, or fluff, or romance in general. But it turned out exactly as I wanted. Plus, mellow & bland is just what I do ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Anw, leave a comment and let me know what you thought my dudes.


End file.
